An enterprise that manufactures one or more products must remain cognizant of a variety of issues and concerns. For example, a given product that the enterprise undertakes to fabricate must, in fact, be capable of fabrication by that particular enterprise. That is, the enterprise must have or be able to reasonably acquire the requisite components and must further be able to successfully assemble such components to realize the final product. As another example, the manufacturer must usually be able to effect fabrication of a given product in a cost-effective manner in order to attain or retain a desired level of competitive performance. This can include use of cost-effective components but can also include efficient use of other manufacturing resources (including, for example, various component manipulators). As yet another example, for a growing number of products in an increasing number of markets, the manufacturer must also concern themselves with eventual de-fabrication of their products in order to be in compliment with relevant recycling and/or disposal requirements. Other examples exist as well with the above examples serving only to suggest the scope of the problem.
In many cases, a manufacturing enterprise has little in the way of institutional knowledge regarding such matters. Various individuals may have personal knowledge and/or access to locally stored information regarding some or all of these illustrative points of concern, but such information rarely exists in a form that can be readily accessed and leveraged by, for example, a manager. Other manufacturers have made some progress towards improved gathering and consolidation of information regarding the components used to assemble their respective product lines. For example, computer aided design (CAD) platforms permit design engineers to identify and track the components that are used to construct a given product. Such CAD systems readily permit file-sharing practices that accordingly permit access to such information by others in the enterprise. As another example, computer aided manufacturing (CAM) platforms permit similar information regarding the specifics of building a given product to be specified and potentially shared with others.
Such tools tend to only focus on portions of the overall picture, however. For example, CAM platforms permit a manager to focus on manufacturing issues but do little or nothing to permit issues presented by the design itself to be easily considered. In similar fashion, CAD platforms permit a manager to focus on the design of a product but can occlude manufacturing-related issues from due consideration. In general, however, a manager cannot readily obtain and/or utilize information regarding both the specific components used to construct a given product and the specific manufacturing processes (including the specific component manipulators) that are used to assemble such components. This, in turn, presents an obstacle to understanding or utilizing corresponding cost information, resource availability information, de-fabrication issues, and so forth. Such conditions can themselves lead to less-than-optimum product offerings and/or non-competitive offerings.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are typically not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention.